Child abuse treated in a psychiatric day hospital

Actuarial, medical and social data are reported on 50 psychiatric day hospital patients known to have abused their children and 50 non-abusers undergoing treatment at the same time. A sub-group of 30 of each completed personality and intelligence tests and the majority had electroencephalograms, and these results were compared with those of a group of 30 healthy mothers selected by health visitors for positive child-rearing abilities.Findings which confirms those of other studies of child abuse include youthfulness, a higher incidence of family violence from childhood onwards, more unplanned pregnancies and lower intelligence in the index group. In this sample, however, all social classes were represented, there was no significant differences in perinatal pathology between the groups, personality scored showed high morbidity in the patient groups but few distinctive features, and EEGs were not significantly more abnormal in the index group than in the two contrast groups. Moreover, the index group did not show the expected discrepancy between verbal and performance sub-tests on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.Treatment of the 50 child-abusers with their children resulted in a re-injury rate of 8% during the four year period of study. A scheme for early identification and prevention is outlined.     

Environmental Detectives—the development of an augmented reality platform for environmental simulations

The form factors of handheld computers make them increasingly popular among K-12 educators. Although some compelling examples of educational software for handhelds exist, we believe that the potential of this platform are just being discovered. This paper reviews innovative applications for mobile computing for both education and entertainment purposes, and then proposes a framework for approaching handheld applications we call “augmented reality educational gaming.” We then describe our development process in creating a development platform for augmented reality games that draws from rapid prototyping, learner-centered software, and contemporary game design methodologies. We provide a narrative case study of our development activities spread across five case studies with classrooms, and provide a design narrative explaining this development process and articulate an approach to designing educational software on emerging technology platforms. Pedagogical, design, and technical conclusions and implications are discussed.

Mobiles and Cancer: A Case of Phony Connections?

Students learning statistics want to know how our methods are used in the real world. In response, this article offers a discussion of a relevant and timely medical study reported in recent headlines. Careful consideration of the study raises some ideas to get students engaged with statistics.     

Knowledge management implementation in the school context: case studies on knowledge leadership,storytelling, and taxonomy

Teachers and school administrators in Hong Kong have had to cope with more work and performance pressure as they strive to implement educational reforms aimed at deepening students’ life-long learning skills. Management systems, which save time and transfer ideas, experiences, and knowledge more efficiently could help schools meet reform goals and relieve the occupational stress that inevitably accompanies change and progress. This paper explores the effect of knowledge management (KM) for school development by reviewing three cases selected from a school improvement project entitled “Knowledge Management and Primary School Development”. The project was launched specifically to determine if KM practices can assist educators to cope with added pressures and rise to the challenges of education reforms. The case studies illustrate three separate approaches to incorporating KM systems. Problems faced by these case-schools included declining school competitiveness, time-consuming data storage and retrieval practices, and hierarchical communication structures that stunted feedback from the teachers who are on the front line of educational reform. Interviews were conducted with school principals, middle managers, and teachers. The results show that the core KM strategies of personalization and codification can be adopted to improve school development. Knowledge leadership, knowledge sharing culture, and knowledge management system support were identified as success factors for schools to implement KM.     

Math skills and labor-market outcomes: Evidence from a resume-based field experiment

We examine the link between math skills and labor-market outcomes using a resume-based field experiment. Specifically, we send fictitious resumes in response to online job postings, randomly assigning some resumes to indicate stronger math skills, and measure employer responses. The resumes that are randomly assigned to indicate stronger math skills receive more interest from employers than the comparison resumes. Our findings add to the body of evidence showing that stronger math skills positively affect labor-market outcomes.